Play fair about Medicare cuts

Seeing U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez play to a roomful of senior citizens Monday for partisan advantage on potential Medicare cuts was not helpful — especially now that leaders of both parties have all but promised that entitlement programs will get whacked, somehow, sometime, in the near future.

Menendez, D-N.J., told about 60 seniors at the Thorofare Fire House to “lift up their voices” to oppose GOP-backed cuts. The senator is obviously correct to the degree the House-passed federal budget cooked up by U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wisc., aims to turn Medicare into a voucher program that would leave beneficiaries (but not anyone older than 55 right now) to the whims and wolves of the private insurance market.

Ryan’s particular effort may justifiably go nowhere — thanks in part to senators like Menendez — but seniors and soon-to-be seniors need to be aware of it, and wary of it. Medicare works well for the kind of coverage it provides, and its basic framework ought to be preserved. Yet, if nothing changes, federal officials warn, it will run out of money by 2024, and not even the slightly higher federal taxes on the wealthiest that the Obama administration wants will make up the difference.

What makes Menendez’s rage-against-the-GOP senior tour — he’s hosted about a dozen such forums around the state — seem duplicitous right now, though, is that President Barack Obama recently put Medicare, along with Social Security and Medicaid, on the table in an effort to revive talks on raising the federal debt ceiling before a possible crisis next month.

While it’s Menendez’s prerogative to oppose any changes his party’s president puts forth to save Medicare rather than gut it, leaving the broad suggestion that only Republicans support benefit-side cuts simply isn’t accurate.

First, the feds need a better handle on waste and fraud in Medicare and its sister program, Medicaid, which covers some seniors’ nursing home care. A new report says systems meant to catch fraudulent claims of $60 billion to $90 billion a year are inadequate. But no matter which party’s in charge, benefit reductions, higher Medicare taxes on a wide range of individuals, premium boosts, delays on when coverage starts (or a combination of these) also will be needed. There’s no getting around it, and New Jersey’s senior citizens shouldn’t think otherwise.